Fitting Out

Fitting in is never easy, especially when you’re trying to squeeze yourself into a tightly-packed little community like Shady Glen.

At our first Shady Glen barbecue, adrift in a sea of unfamiliar faces, we wandered about unmoored until the Couple came over and introduced themselves. They seemed like a very nice couple. They escorted us around, introducing us to others, helping us fit in. Everyone seemed to know them, and like them, and we could certainly see why. Young, attractive and friendly, the Couple drew people to them. They made us feel like we might actually fit in here.

As we talked with the Couple, we learned they were building their dream house, a Tuscan farm house that, they took care to emphasize, would be real Tuscan, not one of those prefab stucco boxes with a few Tuscan features pasted on that masquerade as Tuscan these days. To ensure the utmost authenticity, they had traveled throughout Tuscany with their architect, examining numerous farm houses to ensure that their plans faithfully represented the archetype. No detail was too small for their attention.

While the Couple’s house took shape, they lived in a guest house on the property so they could monitor the construction, ensuring that every little task conformed exactly to the plans. And if it didn’t, they’d make the contractor rip it out and do it over again till he got it right. They even developed a new construction technique (or at least a new way of replicating an old technique) to achieve a certain effect with the stone.

Needless to say, this added months, then years, to their construction schedule, but if something’s worth doing, they’d say, it’s worth doing right.

This all seemed a bit much to me but, if you’re going to build your own house, I guess you might as well build what you want. And I have a soft spot for eccentric quests, so even if the Couple’s Tuscan house odyssey was a bit odd and vaguely off-putting, I cast an indulgent eye on their plans.

Turns out mine was a minority view. As we went about fitting in, meeting more of our new neighbors, we learned that the Tuscan house project pretty much rubbed everyone the wrong way. To the older residents, the Tuscan house’s look-at-me audacity embodied everything they hated about the Yuppies who’d taken over their community. To the other Yuppies, the Tuscan house’s huge size and insanely expensive craftsmanship diminished their own hard-won structure stature. And of course those in the stucco boxes masquerading as Tuscan houses resented everything about the project.

These complaints were typically murmured out of the Couple’s earshot, no one wanting to torpedo their relationship with such an otherwise engaging young couple.

The grumbling would have stayed underground if it hadn’t been for the Design Standards. Every house in Shady Glen must conform to the Shady Glen Design Standards as administered by the Shady Glen Design Review Committee, a standing subcommittee of the democratically-elected Board of Directors of the Shady Glen Homeowners Association. You cannot begin construction without the Committee’s approval, and the Committee will not approve your project until it ensures that every last detail satisfies the Design Standards.

The Tuscan house satisfied the Design Standards when it was first approved, but the Couple’s unceasing quest for perfection drove them to continually tinker with the design And each time they changed the plans, they had to obtain a waiver from the Committee.

At first the Committee routinely granted the waivers, but as the neighborhood grumblings grew, the Committee toughened, suddenly finding obstacles where none had been before, sticking to the letter of the Design Standards, refusing to bend an inch in the couple’s direction. The Couple’s vision of perfection now receding, they held fast, arguing and appealing and lobbying and doing everything in their power to change the Committee’s mind or, failing that, change the Committee’s composition.

If you believe the Couple, the Committee was out to destroy their dreams. If you believe the Committee, the Couple was out to destroy the Design Standards, and therefore the community. Whatever, all I know is the Couple allegedly went ahead and changed their plans without Committee approval, the Committee slapped a stop work order on the project, the Couple allegedly attempted to defy it by restarting work, the Committee levied a heavy fine and barred the Couple’s contractors at the gates, the Couple hired a big time lawyer, and both sides ran to court.

Homeowner litigation is routine in Shady Glen, practically a required element of any construction project, so it’s usually a ho-hum-who-cares kind of thing here. This time, though, it was different.

Residents took sides. Most already hated the house, so they followed the case closely, rooting for the Committee to squash the Couple. Meanwhile, the Couple’s high-powered attorney uncovered a few alleged problems with the Design Standards, and the Committee’s prior administration of said Design Standards, and the canny Couple used this to assemble a coalition of aggrieved residents recently squashed by the Committee, offering them sweet payback (both figuratively and, in the case of those who’d paid fines, literally).

For months, every conversation began with “Whose side are you on?” It was pretty much all anyone talked about here.

Anyways, to make a long story a little less long, the Couple won. The Board was forced to amend the Design Standards. The Committee was forced to return a few years’ worth of fines. And the Shady Glen Homeowners Association was forced to reimburse the Couple for their substantial legal costs.

The Homeowners Association is ordinarily overly solvent, swimming in so much excess cash it could easily absorb these costs. This time, though, the Board decided to levy a special assessment on every homeowner to pay these costs, taking care in their letter to inform us that our hard-earned money was being funneled straight into the Couple’s pockets. If you don’t like it, the letter said, tell the Couple.

This hard-ball tactic turned a number of fence sitters against the Couple, further isolating them. The Wife was banned from her book club. The Husband was no longer welcome at the Saturday morning basketball game. The Kids were no longer automatically invited to birthday parties.

But at least they could finally finish their house, which they did. As they house neared completion, they planned a housewarming party to end all housewarming parties, an incredibly special one-of-a-kind celebration up for their incredibly authentic one-of-a-kind Tuscan house. And, not incidentally, a perfect opportunity to reward their allies, snub their enemies and maybe convert a few fence sitters.

As fence sitters, we were invited. Most of our new friends weren’t. We decided to go anyways, figuring it might be fun and at the very least we’d get to see the house that started it all.

All you need to know about the party is: (1) The house was, indeed, incredible, (2) in case anyone failed to notice that the house was incredible, they hired docents to lead tours of their incredible house and (3) as a parting gift, we were each given a professionally-produced DVD that documented the construction of their incredible house in loving detail, complete with a deep-voiced narrator, multiple camera angles, slick animated titles, background music that sounded vaguely Tuscan and gauzy close-ups of the Couple that blurred away all blemishes.

It’s been a couple of years since the housewarming party to end all housewarming parties, but my jaw still drops when I contemplate the sort of mind that hires a team of architecturally-trained docents to lead tours of one’s new house. Can you imagine? They must have spent hours working with the docents, walking them through the house, pointing out all the hidden details, quizzing them to be sure they correctly recalled the precise type of stone used in the patio or the age of the dining room chandelier.

And that DVD! It’s slicker than anything I’ve ever seen on HGTV. More than that, though, I’m blown away by a mind that would decide, before construction has even begun, “Hey, let’s hire a video crew to follow us along, preserving our project for posterity, and then we can give it to our neighbors as a cherished keepsake of our greatness.” My mind reels.

Sure, I fancy myself a connoisseur of the absurd, and I chose to live in an absurd little community, but c’mon, even I have my limits. This was way beyond absurd. It was simply too much, even for a jaded absurd-watcher like me.

The Couple lost a lot of supporters that night. And, even worse, their DVD was the comedy hit of the summer, circulating throughout Shady Glen to much mirth and merriment, all at their expense. It was so over-the-top, you just had to laugh. They lost whatever respect we ever had for them. They became jokes.

So when, the other day, I flipped absentmindedly through one of those gossipy glossy magazines celebrating local consumption and celebrities, the sort they bulk mail to high income zip codes, and I saw an article entitled “Under a Tuscan Sun in Los Angeles,” I can’t say I was all that surprised to discover it was an eight-page paean to the Couple and their house.

Supposedly shot at an afternoon party, the piece consisted of page after page of pictures of the Couple and their beautiful friends enjoying gourmet Tuscan treats in their incredible Tuscan retreat, all with a perfection that could only be stage-managed by a publicist. Was it intended as a beacon to lure us back to them? If so, it didn't achieved the desired effect. For as I examined the captions, I realized that none of their guests resided in Shady Glen. Not one. If the Couple had hoped to rehabilitate themselves in Shady Glen, they should have invited a few Shady Glen residents, just enough to make the rest of us jealous enough to let bygones be bygones in the hopes of getting invited next time. (Yes, we’re really that shallow.)

Instead, the article confirmed the Couple’s complete isolation from the rest of us, a situation that is unlikely to change anytime soon, for who among us would ever want it known that we associate with pariahs? (Yes, we’re really that shallow.) Isolation isn’t so bad – I, for one, generally prefer it – but for two charismatic people who’ve devoted their lives to being the center of attention, it must be hell.

It’s a shame, for they seemed like a nice enough couple, especially at that first barbecue when they ushered us around, starting us on our quest to fit in just as they started their quest to fit out.

Dream House

Have you ever set foot in your dream house?

I have. It was twenty years ago, Manhattan’s Upper West Side, a narrow east-west street in the high 90s that pleaded for urban renewal. Book-ended by crumbling apartment buildings, the once-uniform rows of brownstones now looked like a Leon Spinks smile: vacant lot gaps, a few white brick façades sticking out like gold-capped teeth, the steel window bars and house front fire escapes looking from a distance like orthodontic braces.

Once grand residences, the remaining brownstones had long since been sliced and diced into starter studios, stoops removed to squeeze in one more, cable lines snaking from the windows to the roof, protruding air conditioners buzzing and dripping in that sticky August afternoon I first walked down the street hunting for my friend’s father’s place.

It looked like the others, at first, then you noticed it still had its stoop, it wasn’t covered with a fire escape and so far it had resisted the white brick face lift. But its dirt-covered windows were barred like a prison, decades of acid rain were etched in black on its brownstone façade, along with spots of graffiti, and battered trash cans and litter were strewn about its basement landing. Like the rest of the street, this place reeked of decay.

I hesitated at the top of the stoop, unsure what to do. Instead of a glass door opening into a shabby little foyer with an intercom, a tenant list, mailboxes and a floor carpeted with old Chinese take-out menus, there was just a door and a doorbell.

Which unit?, I wondered, stepping back to search for a directory or other doorbells. Not seeing any, I rang the bell and waited.

My friend’s voice crackled out of an unseen speaker, the door buzzed and I pushed it open into a smallish vestibule, bench on one side, shoes underneath, rain coats and umbrellas hanging on hooks above, and heard the door clunk solidly shut behind me, then the whir of the unlocked lock engaging again.

A figure loomed larger through the frosted glass panel in the inner door, then a bolt turned and my friend threw open the door and arms spread wide welcomed me with a flourish into his father’s humble abode.

And what an abode it was! My eyes processed it in pieces: Gleaming surfaces, brightly-lit, cool air silently circulating through a huge open space, pictures on the walls, furniture casually but carefully arranged, so much bigger than I expected, everything quiet, no hint of the world I just left behind.

I must’ve looked surprised, for he laughed and offered me the tour, each room a new revelation, most done in different styles and each having its own feel, from the open brightness of the sunlit kitchen to the closed-off darkness of the book-lined library, from the cool clean lines of the main parlor to the warm and cluttered study. We ended up sitting in the backyard under the shade of a vine-covered trellis, listening to the burbling fountain while sipping cold ones and contemplating the splash of colors and the enticing scents surrounding us in this secret garden.

I can’t remember ever feeling this comfortable this quickly in a stranger’s house, I said, it’s as if I’ve lived here my entire life. Everything just feels right. This is one incredible house.

That’s just the beer talking, he said, but then he explained that his parents divorced when he was very young, his father leaving the family in the suburbs and returning to the city. It was a hard time for the city, bankruptcy looming, crime booming and let’s not forget the power outage, but my father believed in the city, he said, and was determined to put down new roots there. A decade in the suburbs had left him with a need for more space than an apartment could provide, but the divorce left him without the cash to buy it, or at least anything in a half-way decent neighborhood, so after looking around for a while he found this place, a broken-down tenement carved up into tiny apartments, mostly empty, so crappy he could afford to buy the building and to buy out the few remaining rent-controlled tenants.

He’d always been handy around the house and, in the divorce, he got the tools, so with little money but nothing else to do with himself, he set about undoing all that had been done to his once-grand residence, working nights and weekends and vacations, one project at a time, slowly turning back the clock and erasing the post-war decades. Whenever he ran into something he didn’t understand, he’d haunt the local hardware stores until someone could explain it to him. This week I earned my plumbing merit badge, he’d say, joking but proud.

He got us every other weekend and holidays, and for a month each summer, my friend recalled, and he made us his hired hands, except we didn’t get paid. Though he worked us like galley slaves, I remember those years fondly. He infected us with his enthusiasm, and something about working together bonded us more closely than you’d expect from a weekend relationship.

It is amazing how well this house turned out, he said, my father knowing just enough to clean it up, not enough to adorn it, designing it only for what he needed, not for what others would expect. It isn’t opulent, but it’s very comfortable, functional and practical, and in its open and unadorned way I suppose it’s also artful. What else do you really need?

Maybe clean up the façade?, I suggested with a smile. But that’s the key, he said, not smiling. In the beginning, my father left it that way for security. If you think this area is marginal now, it was pretty much a slum back then, so he figured it was best to blend in, not to advertise himself.

But over time he grew attached to the grubby exterior. It wasn’t showy, drawing attention to itself, trying to rise above its neighbors. Instead it blended in with the rest of the grubby street. And it was genuine – an 80-year old building should look its age, he’d say, those are just age spots. My father likes to surprise people, to watch their jaws drop as they walk through the door, and he surely sees that the contrast between the grime on the outside and the gleaming inside only heightens their appreciation of his hard work.

So I can understand why my father never touched the exterior, he said, but I can’t say I’m entirely happy with it. It isolates him; his house skulks in the shadows of its own street. He’s never met any of his neighbors, or even made eye contact with them, hiding behind his carefully obstructed windows. My brother calls this place The Bunker. It’s selfish, if you think about it, how he devotes all his energy to the inside of his house, for his own benefit, neglecting to share any of it with his neighbors. Who knows, maybe if he spruced the front up, others would too and the street would look nicer. But I think he likes it this way, his house repelling the neighbors, his street repelling the city.

Where is your father?, I asked. With his girlfriend, he said, looking annoyed. She lives on the East Side, a condo high up in one of those new pencil buildings. She’s afraid of this neighborhood, doesn’t feel safe walking on this street alone, so they spend most of their time at her place. She hates the shabby exterior and it really bugs her to enter through a mud room, she says she can’t have anyone over so she’s always trying to get him to fix it up. But he won’t. So he’s basically moved out of here. Just to be with her. The things we do for love, he said, shaking his head.

Soon after my visit to the house, I moved to Los Angeles and lost touch with my friend. So I never visited the house again, and I never found out whether his father returned to the house.

But though it’s been 20 years, I’ve never forgotten that house. I’ve seen many nicer houses since then, houses that would rank higher on any number of objective and subjective criteria, but for some reason that’s the one house that’s permanently filed away in my mind as the Ideal House.

It’s got to be the façade. That’s what’s unique about the house. When I suggested to my friend that they clean the façade, I was kidding, for even before my friend explained the façade, I knew. I didn’t understand, but I knew.

Only now, 20 years later, do I understand.